A Short History of the Triple Rig

When the water comes up in Cataract Canyon, Holiday boatmen do something that turns heads at every put-in: they lash three rafts together, side by side, and row the whole thing through the biggest rapids in Utah.

The triple rig is a piece of living history. It gives the stability of a much larger boat while staying true to the company’s founding commitment: no motors, ever. Just oars, current, and a crew that knows how to read water.

Dee Holladay built the company on that oar-powered philosophy, and the practices he pioneered were later folded into Leave No Trace protocols adopted across the West. The triple rig is what that philosophy looks like when the river gets big.